Cycling the way to go in this overcrowded city

THE NRMA, unsurprisingly, claims that few cyclists use the
Epping Road corridor each day. The NRMA, like the big oil
companies, has a vested interest to protect, and it is depressing
that private car use in Sydney is still rising, with vehicle
kilometres travelled increasing at twice the rate of population
growth.

We are past the day when we have any choice but to pursue
alternatives: oil is running out and global warming is increasing
at an alarming rate. Our streets are becoming impossibly congested,
polluted and unpleasant to use. The health costs, in respiratory
disease and obesity, to name but two, are well-documented.

Many people choose cars over bikes because they can get directly
to any destination. Get on a bike, and you'll be lucky to find
continuous safe passage.

Cyclists are expected to levitate through impassable gaps in the
network and risk their lives inches from tonnes of speeding metal
on car-dominated roads.

Despite this, nearly 1.5 million bicycles were sold in Australia
last year, 40 per cent more bikes than cars. And this is the eighth
year in a row that bikes have outsold cars.

At last year's C40 Large Cities conference in New York, I cycled
with the mayor of Copenhagen. In the Danish capital 40 per cent of
people use bikes to get to work and study. International experience
shows that if you provide the facilities, people will use them -
but it does not happen overnight.

Our top need is for a clean, efficient, sustainable and
integrated transport system that includes cycleways and mass
transit to move the million-plus people who use the city daily to
their destinations.

Recent research by the City of Sydney indicates that
Sydneysiders would be more likely to cycle if there were dedicated
cycle lanes and better awareness by motorists of bicycle
safety.

Even under the present, less-than-ideal conditions, the Roads
and Traffic Authority has reported a 45 per cent increase in
bicycle traffic in the CBD in the three years to 2005. The city's
own counts show that about 500 cyclists use Oxford Street each
weekday between 7am and 9am - a sixfold increase over the past
decade.

While there are major recreational cycleways - such as the
Sydney Harbour route and the planned Alexandra Canal path - the
city's cycle strategy aims to create an effective and accessible
network with major routes less than five minutes' cycle from every
residence.

It also includes strategies to increase community awareness
about the benefits of cycling, to provide better signage and safer,
separated cycle lanes. We are encouraging end-of-trip facilities
including the provision of parking, storage, change and shower
facilities - which progressive firms like Lend Lease are now
providing in their headquarters.

On the other side of the harbour, North Sydney Council has its
own proposals for getting cyclists safely to the bridge, and local
governments across the metropolitan area are looking at ways of
creating a cycling network that can get people to work, recreation
and educational destinations.

According to the British urbanist Charles Landry, the average US
male devotes more than 1600 hours a year to his car - driving it,
sitting in traffic, parking it. Adding in the time spent working to
pay for it, for petrol, tolls and other charges, he calculates that
same person spends over 18 per cent of his life on his car.

Sydney people have surely got better things to do with that 18
per cent of their lives.

Clover Moore is Lord Mayor of Sydney and the independent
state MP for Sydney.

1199554826137-smh.com.auhttp://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/cycling-the-way-to-go-in-this-overcrowded-city/2008/01/10/1199554826137.htmlsmh.com.auSydney Morning Herald2008-01-11Cycling the way to go in this overcrowded cityClover MooreOpinionhttp://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/03/29/th_clovermoore_index-thumb__60x40.jpg